Yeses, Nos and Open and Closed Doors.

Maybe I’m just not a yes girl.
I’m blessed with so much and so many people I don’t deserve in my life. But recently I’ve realized that I’ve had more closed doors than opened doors in my life, more nos than yeses, and more failures than successes.( ohh that last part rhymed, someone call hallmark because I’m pretty sure that is definitely card material 😉)

While I’ve definitely never “had it rough” or ever had a closed door that didn’t lead to a opened door somewhere, I’m a girl whose life literally began with a no.
I was adopted at birth. My adoptive mother ( who will forever be the one I’m referring to when I say mother, mom or parents) was in the room when I was born, my adoptive father (see above parenthesis for future referencing) was in the waiting room, and they brought me home from the hospital to the home I was raised in, to meet the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and family that would be mine. That blessing happened because of a NO. My biological mother didn’t want another baby, she had 4 at home already and was only 1.5 months postpartum when she became pregnant with me. Financially she couldn’t do what she wanted to do to terminate the pregnancy, so she went to her father who also met her with a no, no to loaning her the money and no to allowing another mouth to feed to be added to their family. So he had an add put in the local major paper and the rest is history. A couple who’d tried for 10 years, had 11 miscarriages, failed IVF and was ready for a baby said YES, and along with that yes I got 2 amazing parents, and was welcomed into a hot mess of a extended family that couldn’t be more mine if we were blood. This was the first time (and literally started before I was even born) that an initial no, lead to an even better blessed yes.

Fast forward 19 years later and approximately 88272 nos and yeses along the way. I was a brand new CNA, taking my pre-reqs for nursing school and ready for a real big kid big hospital job. I applied for I believe 3-4 different positions at the other “big” hospital in town and never even received a single call back or an email, much less an interview. So I held out for about 2 months waiting then accepted that as a NO and applied for the first position I came across for at UMC. My clinical education/assistant director called the next day to set up an interview. By the end of the week that initial NO from the other hospital turned into a YES at the best ( and only magnet designated in the region 😉😂🤷🏻‍♀️) hospital, filled with coworkers who’ve turned into family, strangers who’ve changed my life during the worst and hardest days, physicians who’ve changed my journey as a patient, saved my life, and put up with my nurse patient hot mess self. 7 years later here we are. Still living out the blessings and dream job that, that Yes lead to, with the most selfless, loving and coolest people on the planet beside me.
Next came a no that not a lot of people know about, but one that is important. My first time applying to nursing school was met with a big fat NOOOPE. And it hurt. Like I cried until I was doing the hyperventilating, unintelligible mumbling ugly cry. ( I found out years later it was because my application was thrown out because I didn’t have that stupid meningitis vaccine so it was technically “incomplete” 🙄)

I applied again next semester and received my YES. And let me tell you, if I would not have been in the class I was in, I would NEVER have made it through the hell that was nursing school back then. Seriously y’all students these days don’t know what hell is. Just ask anyone who attended SPC before 2014. 😂 That YES, also lead to some of the most valuable, and realist friendships that still exist today, even if it’s just a ” hey how are you?” during a patient transfer or a “hey you work in [insert specialty here] do you have any advice or recommendations for who to go to for a specialist.” ((And No, Autumn, you don’t get a shoutout here, nursing school didn’t give me you as a Nestie. It gave me you as a damn evil blonde chick who threw Potter & Perry books at my head in 1st semester. 😂😉))

Believe it or not my initial diagnosis even began as a NO. I innocently and naïvely thought when I couldn’t see out of my left eye suddenly it was just an eye infection and went to one of the walk in clinics, they told me no, refused to see me and sent me to the ER. Long story short that lead to an MRI that lead to the “Hey you probably have MS and you’re being admitted for a week.” conversation.
Throughout this illness journey there have been several Nos, multiple closed doors that I still wish would have been open or could be reopened. I was once told I would never walk again, because there was absolutely nothing clinically wrong with me. That NO, lead to 2 open doors that have changed the entire course of my life as a patient. One to the physician and his nurse practitioner who would immediately recognize the problem that did in fact exist and eventually lead to the ability to walk again and work again, the other leading to a MS specialist, who would identify more answers to the problems I was living with and who would work tirelessly over the next 2 years to give me the quality of life I so longed for.
Medication and treatment wise the nos and closed doors have unfortunately outnumbered the yeses by far. And here I am, once again finding myself in the doorway of a yes, a door that was prayed to open so hard, and by so many people, and all I can do is stand here and watch helplessly as it closes. Luckily, this door will close slowly. In 18 months. My dream drug, my last Hail Mary, the drug I once compared to a child (🤷🏻‍♀️) will unfortunately not be a permanent solution or option for me. After beginning the drug JCV negative, 4 months in I’m now positive with a astronomically high index which I found out yesterday will end in my physician terminating the drug in roughly 18 months. My dream YES, is now a NO.
Like all the other initial NOs I’ve referenced above (with the exception of the first one because my little fetus self obviously didn’t care) this hurts. It’s a form of heartbreak like most nos are and it might even be worse to have those 18 months left, knowing what’s coming. Knowing that unless some other drug gets approved in that time I will be left with no alternatives, no other medication. But not left without hope. Because as you can tell by now, all of my favorite yeses, began with a no.

Until then, I’ll keep fighting for the glitter, and being thankful for this incredible glitterful life I live.❤️
-Laura.